I see this court as part of conservatives’ last stand. The current court will impede progress to its last breath, little differently than GOP elected politicians.
But each decision stretches the rubber band tighter in the face of an electorate moving inexorably in the other direction. The majority will not accept minority rule neither happily nor forever; when the full force of the backlash arrives, Republicans risk becoming political non-entities for decades.
The lifetime appointment is more of an abused loophole. Historically justices would frequently resign for whatever reason. They were treated more like cabinet positions. Now it has evolved or devolved into a lifetime deal.
I think all people should be protected from regressive laws like that, regardless of what state they live in.
Of course. I’m thinking “H.W.” and typing “W.”
Bork is an interesting question. Was his rejection the start of politicization, or was nominating him the start of politicization?
Possibly you think we should, via elected officials or direct votes, make that the law in each state. Possibly you think we should amend the Constitution to place the matter beyond the reach of elected officials or direct votes. Possibly you think the Constitution doesn’t need to be so amended, figuring that it already places the matter beyond the reach of elected officials or direct votes.
Is it the third? Because I’m only arguing about the third. If you’re only arguing the first or the second, that strikes me as a completely different question; I figured the Supreme Court was only ruling on the third.
Not true. If that 80% is at all reasonably spread around the various states in 4 years they could elect a majority to congress and impeach a justice. It isn’t easy, but if 80% of the country was really upset enough about it it could be done.
Yes, of course it’s the third option I am arguing for. I think Roe V Wade was rightly decided, though this isn’t the thread to litigate it further.
Here’s an example of what happens:
That’s the AG in Arizona saying that they will continue enforcing state law despite what the Supreme Court says.
I think it matters what public opinion is because if faith is lost in this institution then the others will follow and that leads to instability, chaos, revolution, whatever.
In the past, most of us thought the justices were honestly trying their best to interpret the Constitution fairly. We may not have agreed with what they ruled, but we didn’t question their motivation or their ethics. Now we know that the conservative majority has an agenda in what they agree to hear as well as how they will vote. Is there anyone who can’t predict how Clarence Thomas will vote on any case involving social issues? Not only are their decisions highly politicized, they have decided that they are above acting ethical. They don’t care if their agenda is evident and they don’t care that we know they’re on the take. This is dangerous shit here.
While I’m at it, I don’t buy the reasoning “the justice ruled this way because he/she is an originalist, a texturalist, or whatever” I think it’s the other way around. Judges adopt the Constitutional philosophy that matches the rulings they want to make. They’re human like the rest of us, they know what direction they’d like the country to go in and they’ll rule according to that.
I think this is a very fair point. Even a firebrand like Scalia occasionally decided in surprising ways, if his originalist process led him to do so. Not so with Thomas or Alito. You can bank on how they’ll rule.
Mitch McConnell understands the danger of a widespread perception that the Supreme Court is a conservative political actor – he has an op ed in the Washington Post today refuting that claim. He goes to great lengths to deride the idea the Court has a partisan agenda. Because he didn’t spend four years putting up with Trump so he could pack the Supreme Court just to have a bunch of liberal crybabies undermine the legitimacy of the project.
That is an unwittingly portentous lede:
The escalating attacks from Democrats betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the court’s structure and purpose. …
IOW, the Democrats never really understood that the whole and entire point of the court was to ensure conservatism, now morphed into Reactionary Wacko Traitorism, is the only true path for the USA. Always was, is now, and shall always be. Stupid Democrats bleating about a fait accompli.
Really. I saw no indication of that in his op-ed. There is a brief whine about how the Democrats are attacking the justices and questioning their ethics, but then he uses raw voting statistics to “prove” that some of the RW justices vote with the liberal justices more often. More careful examination of the stats is likely to reveal that he is just a bullshitter.
To be clear, I’m not saying that’s his argument in the op-ed, rather that it’s his goal with the op-ed. You have to ask yourself why McConnell isn’t trumpeting the fact that he secured a conservative Supreme Court for a generation. And he is, when behind closed doors with conservative groups. The fact that he felt compelled to write an op-ed for more general distribution to show that the Supreme Court is not partisan tells me that he sees danger with this line of attack from Democrats.
Said another way, Wacko RW conservatives lie about their true motives. And the actual effects of their true actions. Film at 11.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. Unsurprisingly, everyone voted along party lines.
This is funny. Lindsey Graham has made a damning condemnation against the conservative members of the Supreme Court, even if he didn’t mean to.
Helping lead the charge was Sen. Lindsey Graham, who declared during the proceedings that the legislation represented “a bill to destroy a conservative court” that he and the rest of the GOP have worked hard to build.
But that’s bizarre. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, “To state the obvious, the proposed law would apply to all Supreme Court justices, no matter which party’s president appointed them.” It’s not as if the bill targets conservative jurists; the plan would be to create guardrails for the institution itself, now and into the future.
Essentially, he’s saying that any ethics oversight will disproportionately affect conservative judges. The only reason that would be is if the conservative judges are far more corrupt and violate ethical standards far more than their left-leaning colleagues. That’s a pretty harsh thing to state out loud, Lindsey.
Meanwhile, the court’s legitimacy is so tenuous that Alabama has decided to simply ignore a recent ruling.
I understand what you’re saying but FWIW I don’t quite agree.
IMO what Lindsay meant was
We have labored long and hard to create a purely ideological court that ignores the law in favor of (RW) politics. Now that we have our victory, those mean Dems wish to take it away from us. We cannot permit that.
Yes if, hypothetically, there was such a a thing as a liberal court, this bill would equally neuter their attempts at partisan skullduggery. But now that we have the power, you don’t think we’d ever permit a liberal court to ever exist again, now do you? Of course not. Now run along and let us finish the vital business of destroying the United States for all time.
I said what he was saying, not what he meant.